As one of environment protection solutions to reduce air pollution, automobile manufacturers have launched electrical automobiles. Unlike conventional automobiles, the electrical automobile is provided with an electric motor such that it receives electricity from a battery and uses it as power. Meanwhile, the battery used in such automobile is more susceptible to fire by breakage than the existent automobiles, and this means that there is a greater risk of secondary damages. Therefore, a battery protecting device is a very important part of such electrical automobile, and it has to be effective enough.
A general conventional battery case or protecting device for protecting the battery of an electrical automobile has been manufactured in various forms of protecting devices that are installed in a lower portion of the electrical automobile and that prevent the breakage of the battery when collision on the lateral sides occurs. The recently launched protecting devices have simpler structure and at the same time, have reduced weight and manufacturing cost.
For example, Korean Patent Publication No. 2012-0050234 provides a structure including a plurality of steel reinforcement brackets on an inner bottom surface of a battery case that houses therein a battery, a plurality of steel square beams on an outer bottom surface to support the battery case, and mounting brackets at ends thereof. These steel reinforcement brackets and square beams are configured to prevent damages and breakages of the battery from external impact, by greatly increasing lateral stiffness of the battery case. However, the reinforcement brackets and square beams fixed as described above are installed on not only the upper portion of the battery case, but also the lower portion of the battery case. This means that additional process is required, thus decreasing economic efficiency. Further, the overall weight increases, thus resulting in a problem of reduced distance to empty.
Korean Patent Publication No 2014-0034505 provides a protecting device characterized by a reinforcement assembly installed in a case body that houses a battery therein, which has an uneven structure to absorb impact energy. By using such protecting device, effects of reduced weight and reduced cost are obtained. Further, simpler structure allows various advantages including ease of application in various types of vehicles. However, in order to obtain the effects described above, the precondition is necessary that the depth or the width of the uneven structure in use should be adjusted to match each type of electrical automobile or each circumstance. If the shapes and the sizes of the uneven structure of the protecting device have to be determined and fabricated to match each type of electrical automobile or each circumstance, even if the amount of materials used is reduced and the cost is reduced, it would inevitably increase difficulty of mass production and therefore, increase the unit price.
Accordingly, the related technology for a protecting device that prevents a battery for an electrical automobile from breakage from external impact energy suffers several limitations such as increased overall weight of the electrical automobile due to many structure components added to ensure protective effect, or even when the structure is far simpler, economic efficiency deteriorates because fabrication thereof requires customization for each automobile type or circumstance.